The White Rocks, bred over decades for insatiable appetites and rapid growth, and likely to just eat, drink and SIT once they get growing, are behaving like CHICKENS! Every morning the door opens, three quarters of the 40 burst out on the run, tearing around, facing off in sudden skirmishes, and eventually settling down to scratch in the grass. At five weeks, they’ve practically doubled in size from when they arrived, they eat feed like maniacs, BUT, they do get out… We’ll see if all this exercise makes a difference as they keep growing and growing at their startling rate—for now at least, they seem happy and active and knocking back the bugs!
Animals
This year’s chickens
The White Rocks have arrived. Yes, 40 more White Rock Cornish X males, here for the fattening and then away for the slaughter. We got two-week-olds for the same reason as last year: save time and care with so many things going on! Their new chickenhouse isn’t quite ready, so I set up temporary quarters in the barn, 2×10’s surrounding a 4×8 sheet of plywood. A brand new feeder and waterer, some fresh wood shavings, and they’re let loose to do what they do best: EAT! (But there are PLANS to get them properly outside this time, eating bugs and romping in the dirt…)
Starting the new chickenhouse
Forty two-week-old meat chickens arrive in two days: now sounds like a great time to begin building a new chickenhouse. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch. The plan is to reassemble and repurpose the once-and-formerly-future farm stand. With its fairly massive floor, 6×6 rough cut cedar posts, and galvanized roof, it should be a fairly solid and complete framework, just add some studs and plywood. Except, the stand was completely taken apart for the old-farm-new-farm move, with the exception of the base, which was only cut in two. So it’s kind of a puzzle. Michael gets to work! (Elsewhere today, another shopping trip to our farmers’ market…our attendance record is so far perfect…)
Abandoned bee village
There’s an apparently abandoned bee village on the edge of the tree-enclosed clearing just beyond the main field (the clearing is past the fence, covered in snow, in this pic). There is a backstory here, still to be fully figured out, but the basic fact of the moment is a forlorn, ghost town-looking double row of hives, maybe 15 in all. I don’t know anything about beekeeping, so I did a little research. These seem to be the standard Langstroth hive design, used all over the world. From the photos I saw, the set-up here looks pretty normal, except for the tilting, the worn out paint, and the solidly rusted electric fence that surrounds them. Sorting this out is something new to do this spring. Our future in bees…
One-horse farming
Conall‘s winter job this year is cutting firewood on Canada’s east coast (Nova Scotia), in partnership with his trusty workhorse, Dixie. It sounds pretty intense. He started tiny farming from scratch two seasons ago, our first full-season full-timer, way back in ’07. Last year, he was out in NS, on a tiny, one-horse farm, learning to plow and cultivate veggies, and bring in the hay, with Dixie. This winter’s job involves heading into the woods with Dixie, where he fells small trees with a chainsaw, guides Dixie to drag the logs, at times through waist-deep snow, to a clearing, cuts down the logs to firewood, loads it onto the sled, and hauls it out for delivery. Conall’s plan for this summer: a Dixie-powered market garden… What I wonder is, the Kubota compact tractor vs Dixie?
See ya, goats and chickens…
Doing the last rounds on the old farm, saying farewell to chickens and goats. Here, a bunch of the girls (goats) are chomping away on hay, and the eight cockerels are enjoying a day in the cold sun. They seem to be getting on well, there used to be usually one low guy running a little scared, but since they’ve been kept in for a bunch of supercold days, all has apparently been worked out and they stick togther now. Of course, who knows what’s going on in the chicken mind?! The goodbye is not any formal thing—a little ceremony, perhaps?!—just something in my head. Ends and beginnings are weird, before and after we can make as much or as little of ’em as we like, but the actual fact happens in a blink. It looks like I’ll do the big main farming move on Sunday. The farm sale doesn’t close for a couple of months, so I’ll be back here in March (hey, that’s only next month already!) for the greenhouse and to dig up some herb transplants. Meanwhile, I’ve given Bob the chickens (the girls are laying away, the guys, well, they’re past their tender meat-bird prime…and looking good), so they’re be well taken care of. And I’m looking around these last days with slightly new eyes at the familiar stuff I’ll be leaving… :)
Chickens on egg
Another (quiet) farm day, another fine distraction from the chickens’ bag of entertaining tricks: swarming on stuff! This happened to be a piece of a semi-frozen egg that I found in the deep litter. The egg had probably been buried since yesterday, insulated, frozen to the point of cracking, but not yet hard as rock. I broke it open to take a look, and accidentally dropped a big chunk. BAM, the girls were on it in a mad rush, a totally focussed frenzy, like nothing else in the world even existed. If it was anything but the wee friendly girls, that sort of swarming would be kinda scary. As it is, it was fun to watch. Crazy chickens.